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Also among the people indicted was a Feeding Our Future employee, Abdikerm Abdelahi Eidleh, who was accused of taking kickbacks from people involved in the scheme. Three of the 47 defendants — including another of the nonprofit’s employees, Hadith Yusuf Ahmed — were charged via “criminal information” rather than a grand jury indictment.

The state blocked Feeding Our Future from receiving more aid money after the F.B.I. served search warrants in the case in January. The nonprofit group sought to dissolve at the time, but Attorney General Keith Ellison of Minnesota, a Democrat, blocked the move. Mr. Ellison asked a judge to supervise the group while he investigated whether it broke state charity laws. That investigation appears to be continuing.

As described by prosecutors, the participants targeted two federal food-aid programs, which were administered through state governments. They were intended to feed children in after-school programs and summer camps. But when the pandemic hit, Congress rejiggered the programs to reach millions of children stuck at home, pouring in billions of dollars more and changing the rules to let families pick up meals to go.

As funding went up, however, oversight went down: State officials, for instance, no longer had to check on feeding sites in person.

That left one last line of defense: the so-called watchdog sponsors, like Feeding Our Future. Those nonprofit groups served as conduits for money, from the states to individual feeding sites, and they were supposed to be on guard against fraud.

But the system also gave those watchdogs a reason not to bark: They could keep 10 to 15 percent of the money that flowed through them.